


Everyone Goes Five Over

by Ranni



Category: Avengers, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Aftermath of Violence, Angst, BAMF Tony Stark, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Is a Good Bro, Captivity, Clint Barton Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt Clint Barton, Hurt Tony Stark, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Kidnapping, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, POV Tony Stark, PTSD, Panic Attacks, Protective Bruce Banner, Protective Natasha Romanov, Protective Steve Rogers, Protective Tony Stark, Team as Family, Tony Stark Feels, Tony Stark Has A Heart, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-14
Updated: 2017-11-21
Packaged: 2019-01-29 03:34:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 14,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12622260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ranni/pseuds/Ranni
Summary: Everything—every bit of pain, every bit of violence, every word said in anger—all of it is easier when you stop seeing others as real people.—or—Tony allows himself five minutes of pure terror and then clamps down hard, because panicking now isn’t going to free them. The local police are complicit, SHIELD is compromised, and the Avengers aren’t coming. Someone has to save the day around here, and that someone is going to have to be Tony Stark.





	1. Chapter 1

*******

Clint glares accusingly. "You were you texting, weren't you?"

Tony scoffs as tries to find a more comfortable position, but his hands are cuffed up far too high for that, digging uncomfortably into the middle of his back. "You were sitting right beside me—tell me exactly how I could text without you noticing, _Hawkeye_."

"Then you must’ve been speeding."

Tony can’t tell if Clint’s actually angry or just highly annoyed at the inconvenience of being arrested. "I was barely even going five miles over the limit."

"Yeah, that’s called speeding!"

"Oh, come on; _everyone_ goes five over." Tony kicks at Clint, tired of all the grumbling and grumpy faces. “This is just a mistake. The car was reported as stolen—probably someone’s idea of a joke. I’d blame _you_ , if you weren’t...you know, _also_ here.“

“How far away is your station, anyway?” Clint calls, but the police officer, or sheriff’s deputy, or whatever the hell he is—Tony isn’t quite sure how these rural areas operate—doesn't respond. They’ve been driving for awhile now and every minute that passes the archer gets noticeably more disconcerted.

“Take some deep, cleansing breaths, Cuckoo Bird,” Tony suggests, taking a few exaggerated ones of his own, determined not to show how uncomfortable the action is on his strained shoulders. “When we make it to the Hicksville PD everything will get all sorted out. This little incident will be nothing but a humorous sidenote in the Stark-Barton Roadtrip of Destiny."

 

*******

But it's not especially funny when, instead of the police station, they pull up to a large industrial building in the middle of nowhere, the cop in the passenger seat muttering "We're here” into a cell phone.

Some men walk out briskly toward the car, and Tony demands "What’s going on?", still half hopeful that there's a reasonable explanation.

Clint takes in the same scene and goes berserk, turning and throwing his upper body into Tony's lap as he kicks against the window as hard as he can. It shudders a bit but doesn't break, and it's the last thing Tony sees before the door behind him is yanked open, and a taser brought to his neck.

 

*******

It's some sort of textile factory, and the room they're in is full of moldy piles of fabric and old sewing tables, some still with machines on top. The rectangular table is metal with rusted patches where the paint has flaked off, simple and cold, all sharp corners and long edges, bolted firmly to the floor. Tony's hands are ziptied around one leg and his feet around another, and he's freezing his ass off on the world's hardest cement floor and trying to ignore the woman with a gun standing five feet to his right.

Clint is held more securely across the room, as if their captors are aware of his capacity for wilier maneuverings. He's laying flat on his stomach, arms extended fully with hands cuffed to opposite legs of a table in front of him, each foot to the legs of another table behind. They’ve stripped him down to a t-shirt and boxer briefs, again somehow guessing of lockpicks sewn into cuffs. He wakes up with a groan, then cranes his neck up uncomfortably to look around, exhaling with relief when he spots Tony. "Everyone goes five over, huh?” He rolls his eyes and laughs ruefully.

“You feeling okay, Sleepy Sleeperton?”

“Are you kidding? They had that taser charged so high I lit up like a Christmas tree; if I wasn’t tied down right now I’d be bouncing around this room like a goddamned pinball.” Clint stretches his limbs as much as he can, testing the cuffs, and sighs loudly. The woman guard is just out of his eyeline, but he knows she’s there. “This floor is f _reezing_ , and I have to lay on it like a half naked starfish. Why does Tony get to sit up and I don't? What ever happened to prisoner equality? It’s because he’s rich, isn’t it?”

“Nah, because I’m better looking." Like Clint's, his words are also for the woman’s benefit, Tony doing his best to project an annoying  _See how unconcerned we are? See how your abduction of us has done nothing to dampen our indomitable spirits?_ “It looks like they’re preparing you to be a human sacrifice. Any moment someone will be along to carve a bloody pentagram into your back.”

“Then what happens? They start chanting backwards and invoke an evil entity?” Clint laughs, rolling his hands again, working the cuffs. One of his wrists is already bleeding. “Heh, maybe they’ll summon up Natasha.”

“That’d be pretty convenient,” Tony agrees. “Convenient for _us_ , I mean. Less so for this lovely chickadee, who’s gonna get her tailfeathers kicked.”

"Shut up," the woman advises. Her voice is a bored monotone, not what Tony would consider especially threatening, but Barton’s smile evaporates instantly at the words. He tries to turn back further to look at her, but she’s it’s now obvious she chose her angle carefully to avoid just that.

"You know her?" Tony asks. 

Clint shrugs one shoulder awkwardly, handcuffs and overextended limbs limiting the motion. “I recognize her voice. Maybe.”

The woman looks a little taken aback, then smooths the expression over immediately, and while she’s not familiar to Tony at all something about that action is.

“I can describe her to you,” Tony offers, trying to cover his sudden unease.  “Brown hair, pinched face, like she’s had Mexican food that turned on her. Feel free to cut loose if you need to—no point in pretending to be ladylike when you’re involved on the wrong side of a kidnapping. Might as well be comfortable before Barton picks those locks with a fingernail and then kills you.”

She snorts derisively. “I’d love to see him try.”

“Me too,” Tony says sincerely. “In fact, I can’t _wait_ for it to happen.”

 

*******

Tony’s blood pressure goes up by approximately four hundred points as the room fills with people, but he’s also relieved, because whatever these people have planned is finally going to happen, and without all the drama of a protracted wait. There are no police officers this time, just four burly men and one slighter one. He stands apart from the others and glares at Tony, who guesses that his lack of participation means that this is the person in charge.

“I want you sitting here in a chair,” the man says to Clint, drumming his fingers on the metal table nearest his hands. “Now, are you going to come here nicely?”

“Probably not,” Clint admits, and cranes his neck up again to look at the men as they move toward him. “Fuck!” he spits, suddenly struggling as if electrified. “You pieces of shit!” He manages to smack his head into one of the men who leans down too close to grab the handcuffs. The man paws at his bloody lip and swears while another kicks Clint in hard in the ribs.

And for Tony it clicks then, _everything_ clicks. The effortless way they were caught, the woman’s expression, the efficient way they’ve secured Clint, his violent reaction now—these people aren’t just professionals. They’re SHIELD agents.

All of them except for the man in charge, who nods toward the woman. She holsters her gun and pulls a knife from her pocket, holds it to Tony’s neck and gives a low, two note whistle.

Clint stills instantly, looking over, then growls with angry recognition now that he can actually see her. “Stop it, Sandrine, you lousy bitch.”

There’s a pregnant pause before she sticks the blade of the knife about a quarter inch into Tony’s neck. It takes every scrap of self control he has not to flinch in response, not to drive the tip further in. He keeps his face as blank as possible—that little trick might be a SHIELD standard, but it's also one that Tony Stark has mastered—as a stream of blood pools into the hollow his throat.

Clint’s eyes are wide and angry and focused on the knife. “Stop stop stop—okay, I’ll sit in your goddamned chair!”

The man nods again and as she pulls the knife out of Tony’s neck a warm rush of blood follows. He’s fairly sure nothing desperately important was nicked, but tucks his chin down anyway to try and stem the flow; to die from such a tiny stab wound would be a little embarrassing. The woman—Sandrine, according to Clint—draws her gun again, presses it to the side of Tony’s head with a moue of distaste.

The four men unshackle Clint and maneuver him up and onto a metal folding chair, each of them gripping and controlling one of his limbs. He lets it happen, obviously struggling against the instinct to fight back, so tense he’s shaking—but keeps his eyes trained on Tony and Sandrine, as if reminding himself of the cost if he tries anything.

Tony smiles reassuringly at him, an attempt at _I’m fine, still confident, still completely unconcerned_ that likely fools no one. Clint narrows his eyes back, then grits his teeth as his hands are recuffed tightly, his arms stretched out onto the table in front of him. They leave his legs unrestrained, and he sighs loudly and dramatically, affecting a great disdain as he hooks one ankle around the front leg of the chair.

The man drags another chair over, dropping a bag on the floor beside him with a loud metal clang, and sits across the table from Clint. “Don’t worry,” he says kindly. “This isn’t about _you_.”

“Then why are there five SHIELD agents here?” Clint bites out.

"Finding them was the easiest part of this whole operation—so many SHIELD agents are tired of the Avengers. Especially _you_ , Barton,” the man adds with a good humored wink. “Too many hard feelings and not enough group hugs, I guess. They’re here for the same reason the local police were willing to help out—there’s lots of people that are sick of mass murderers masquerading as heroes. You guys leave behind a swath of damage and dead bodies and don't even care. I bet you sleep great at night, don't give any of it a moment's thought."

“Oh shit,” Tony sighs. It’s clear enough where this is all heading. Clint sighs again and then looks meaningfully at Tony, who frowns, not sure if Clint’s trying to check out the knife wound or communicate something.

"Your team killed my brother. He was working in the prison you destroyed in Cairo. He died there. Your team killed him and so many others, and you didn't even know it. You never even knew their names.”

“I don’t even fucking know _your_ name!” Clint juts his chin out challengingly. “And if your brother was in involved in that Egyptian shithole—then, _gosh_ , I guess that means he was a bad person, just like you. You wanna talk about ‘not enough hugs’? Must be a great family that produces not one, but  _two_ shitty sons. Right, Stark?” He rolls his eyes conspiratorially, then shifts them up minutely at a spot above Tony’s shoulder.

Okay, now he’s _definitely_ trying to communicate something, but Tony also  _definitely_ has no idea what it is—he doesn’t speak the ‘double blink, tap of the nose, swipe of the eyebrow’ covert spy language that Natasha and Clint are so fluent in. He tries to look around himself as subtly as possible, but doesn’t see anything but Sandrine’s gun and open air. It’s possible that Clint wants him to attempt to disarm her, but that’s a joke—while he’s sure he can get his hands free from the ziptie, he also sure he can’t do it quickly or inconspicuously enough to escape her notice.

The man frowns, looking displeased that things aren’t going the way he imagined; Clint’s mouthiness often takes people by surprise. “My name is David Shaw,” he says, his equanimity quickly returning, then reaches down into the bag by his feet and pulls out a clawed hammer. He smiles and bounces the head of it lightly in his palm.

“Okay, let’s not get the crazy ramped up,” Tony says. Blood has trickled all the way down his arm now, into the ziptie, making it sticky and uncomfortable. He tries to focus on that, because he doesn’t want to look at that hammer, doesn’t want to imagine what Shaw needs it for, but his eyes keep returning to it like magnets. “Come on, let’s talk this shit through like the big brave boys that we all are.”

Clint is also deliberately not looking at the hammer. Even handcuffed he's quick—quicker than most people, quick enough surely to snatch the tool out of the man's hands and beat him to death with it—but does nothing. Tony can see the strategy play out over Clint’s face, a rapid run of scenarios, all of which Tony hopes end with Clint standing triumphant atop a pile of dead bodies. Clint’s gray eyes move repeatedly from Shaw, to Tony’s face, to Sandrine’s gun, then back to Shaw.

"Spread your fingers nice and wide for me," Shaw advises, tapping the hammer against his palm with a soft smacking sound. "I wouldn't want to hit more than one at a time."

"Fuck," Clint says mildly. He sighs and slumps in his chair, using the motion to mask a shift of his ankle up higher on the leg of the chair, his other foot sliding farther out.

"Do you enjoy being an Avenger?" Shaw asks in the same tone, as if they’re making polite conversation; just two men hanging out in an abandoned factory with nothing better to do.

"Usually.” Clint stares glumly at his splayed fingers. “On days like this one? Not so much."

"Yeah," Shaw answers, almost regretfully.

"So you're going to hurt us to make yourself feel better." Tony wants the attention back on himself, wants to delay whatever is going to happen so Clint can get his shit together and make a move already. "How does that _even_ compute for you?"

"Originally I thought I'd get that pretty little gal of yours. Cut her up real slow and let you watch her scream. But she's a good person, a smart and useful person. No reason for _her_ to be hurt. Your other friends, however...." He gestures vaguely at Clint and wrinkles his nose. "A group of _terrible_ people. But you seem to like them, so I thought having you watch them go down one by one would be a nice way to start."

"You're an utter moron if you think you can carry out any threat when it comes to the Avengers," Tony points out. “I’m eager to see how that works out for you—when the Hulk pops your head off, when the Black Widow turns you and your little helpers inside out. Thor’s in town, too; he’ll be delighted to jump in. Captain America won’t like it, but he can look the other way just this once.”

"You’re not like the others,” Shaw says, directing his words at Tony but keeping all of his attention focused on Clint, now tossing the hammer lightly back and forth between his hands. “Without your metal suit you’re weak, just a man, and not a particularly good one. You think you can talk your way out of any problem, and if that doesn’t work, you buy your way out. If _that_ fails you start shooting, and anything you can’t blow up you get your pet superheroes to destroy for you.”

“Sounds about right.”

Tony wills Clint to look over again, to give some other indication of what he wants Tony to do, of the way out he sees for them. But Clint doesn’t look back, just keeps sitting there. His legs aren’t even cuffed, only his hands. His mind might be running a mile a minute, but his body isn’t moving at all, just sitting there with that strained calm.

Nothing about this is going like it should.

“Since you don’t get to talk your way out of this, we can go for your second favorite strategy. I'll let you buy back pieces of Barton. Shall we say—a million dollars per finger?” Shaw’s grin is all teeth and mocking.

Tony doesn't take the bait, because there’s no way it's going to be that easy, not with this setup, _nothing_ in this is about or can be solved with money. Shaw just wants to dangle a little bit of futile hope, wants to see Tony squirm, to watch him make ridiculous, escalating, pleading offers.

"Yeah, I think a finger is definitely worth a million dollars.” Shaw winks at the man nearest to Clint, and the agent laughs. “A thumb is more useful, though, so I suppose I’ll want two million for each. See, most people's lives are worth nothing to you, Stark. But how much is a _friend_ worth? Can you put a price on it?” He stops moving the hammer back and forth, and as annoying as that had been it’s somehow worse when held suddenly so still. “What happens if he’s broken? If he can't fight for you anymore? How much is he worth _then_?"

Clint’s jaw tightens and Tony sees him move, just a minute slide forward in his seat that Shaw doesn’t seem to notice. But the SHIELD agents catch it, two of the men taking a step closer while Sandrine presses her gun painfully into the side of Tony’s head, as if she intends to bore a hole there.

"Fine, I’ll pay you!” Tony says desperately, even though he knows that’s all a trick, just a distraction from whatever Shaw really has planned. “Look, you obviously have a problem with me, so let’s just make this whole thing actually  _about_ me. Leave him out of it; leave _all_ of them out of it.”

"You’re right.” Shaw exhales loudly and smiles brightly at Clint, who glowers back. "This isn't about the other Avengers at all. It _is_ about you, and how I want to hurt you. And, Stark? This is the best way."

Shaw swings the hammer in the same moment that Clint wrenches his hands away from the table and tips his chair back, but the archer’s reaction is too quick and instinctive for him to realize that his hands aren't the target at all. The hammer smashes into the left side of Clint’s face, the momentum sending him flying over the side of the chair.

He hits the floor with a thud that's somehow louder than Shaw's laugh, than Sandrine’s gasp, than Tony's cry of horror.

 

*******

The next few minutes pass in a white haze, the wet, crunching impact of the hammer echoing endlessly in Tony's ears, where he half expects it will remain forever, burned there, the auditory equivalent of ruining one's eyes by staring at a solar eclipse.

The sound is louder than the SHIELD agents’ excited chatter; one of them claps Shaw on the shoulder. Louder than Shaw’s laugh as he stands over Clint, holding the hammer in one hand and his phone high in the air with the other, taking pictures. He checks the image, laughs again, takes another. Then the SHIELD agents take their own turns, one even flashing a peace sign as they photograph themselves beside Clint’s body, like he’s a trophy animal instead of a human being.

Sandrine holds her gun limply down at her side, looking sick and dismayed as the others celebrate. She glances at Tony, her eyes immediately dancing away when they meet his.

Finally Shaw gestures to her and the others and they exit, glee and triumph obvious in every line of his body as he struts out. He points and Tony on the way out and says something that makes the other men laugh, but Tony doesn’t hear that either.

There’s just the sound of metal on flesh and bone, the crunching of teeth, still ringing in his ears.

There’s just the sight of one bare foot propped up on the seat of the folding chair, the rest of Clint’s body sprawled out below.

Tony’s shocked, shallow breathing gives way to huge gasping gulps of air and he leans his forehead against the cold metal of the table leg, his mind caught in a panicked mantra of _he's dead oh god he’s dead Clint's dead_. But a dissenting voice is also there, and sounds a lot like Bruce.

 _He's breathing_ , it argues back. _You can_ hear _him breathing. He's alive_.

He _can_ hear it suddenly, Clint’s breathing, wet and labored and overly loud, and tries to focus only on that, to quiet his own gasps in order to hear Clint’s, because as long as he hears them it means his friend is still alive.

 _Alive for now,_ that Bruce-voice urges, _but losing more blood and whatever chance he has at recovery with every moment you sit there doing nothing._

Tony allows himself one more minute of pure terror and then clamps down hard, because that voice is right, and panicking now isn’t going to free them. The local police are complicit, SHIELD is compromised, and the Avengers aren’t coming. Someone has to save the day around here, and that someone is going to have to be Tony Stark.

"Alright," he says finally. " _Alright_.”

 

*******

Of the two prisoners only Clint had been considered the real threat, which would usually be a terrible insult to Tony’s pride, but it certainly works in their favor now. The agents hadn’t even bothered to cuff him, obviously not believing there was any way a civilian, much less a pampered billionaire, would be able to free himself from a pair of zipties.

“Underestimating me from the start,” Tony mutters, shifting his hands up to get a better look. “I guess you’ll find out where _that_ gets you.”

He grabs the end of the tie with his teeth and leans back to pull it as tight as he can; increasing the tension will make it easier to break. The plastic cuts into his skin and blood wells over the already tacky half dried blood from his neck, layers and layers of blood. _A biological lasagna_ , Tony thinks with faint hysteria, reminding himself to tell that to Bruce later; he’ll think it’s hilarious. Then bones of his wrists grind against one another and the pain makes it easier to focus only on this moment, only on getting out of this.

When he’d practiced this before he had used his knee as a fulcrum, which is impossible now, but the immovable table leg his hands are bound to will certainly work just as well. Tony positions it between the now tiny gap between his hands and tears his wrists forcefully apart, baring his teeth in triumph as the ziptie snaps immediately.

The tie around his ankles is more difficult, the angle awkward, and requires a lot of uncomfortable contorting and stretching. He breaks through it just as Clint starts to come around, groaning and shifting in a rigid, spastic way that is somehow more frightening than the corpselike stillness. Tony’s feet and legs ache painfully as the blood rushes back into them, but he lurches up anyway, stopping short when he finally gets a good look at his friend's face.

That Clint had thrown himself backward just as Shaw attacked is likely the only reason he isn’t dead now—instead of impacting just above the ear the hammer had caught him on the underside of his jaw instead, wrenching it almost completely off. Clint's left eye is already swollen shut; the right one is open but staring and unfocused, not really seeing anything at all.

There’s blood everywhere and he thinks vaguely that Clint might choke on it, that he should move Clint to the recovery position or something—as little as he knows about medical matters he does know that much. But even as Tony reaches out he just as quickly jerks his hands away, afraid to touch any part of him, afraid of the likely brain injury, afraid of moving Clint’s neck so much as a millimeter.

 _Never ever move a trauma victim_ , Bruce scolds solemnly in Tony’s ear.

"I’m _not_...I'm going to just— there’s blood— it can all still be okay—“

Tony somehow gets back onto his feet and staggers over to a stack of old fabric near the wall—moldy, cheerful patterns of yellow ducks with red umbrellas, frogs with bowler hats, bears with floating heart shaped balloons. He pulls some material out from the middle of the pile, hoping it’s somehow less filthy that way, then goes back to Clint, grits his teeth and tries to ignore the _don't touch him, he’s dying, don't touch him_ still screaming through his head. He tries to look past the gruesome injury and see the person he knows is under all that blood—to picture his friend's well known crooked smirk instead—and can’t.

 _It's easier when you don't think of them as people_ , Natasha told him once. The team’s most ruthless pragmatist, Natasha gets through everything with impassive eyes and a determined set to her mouth. _You can scream about it later, if you want. If it helps. Until then, just don’t think of them as real people._

She had been talking about enemies and not a teammate, and certainly she would never apply those words her best friend, but it _is_ easier. It’s easier to think of Clint as a stranger, or as just a body to deal with, easier especially when it doesn’t look like Clint at all, could literally be anyone laying there. Tony steels himself and operates mechanically, packing material around the head and neck the best that he can, trying to staunch the bloodflow and stabilize the neck with a minimum of movement.

It’s working, and he’s doing fine until there’s a low moaning noise that shatters the illusion, because no matter what he _looks_ like it _sounds_ exactly like Clint. Sounds just like Clint any other time that he’s in pain—after he goes through a window and is cut to ribbons, after getting pummeled by Natasha in training, after a mission, taking stock of injuries and groaning _Aw, crap, I think I cracked a rib_.

Tony ignores the sound as best as he can, but it hurts, reminding him too much that it’s actually Clint, and he finishes hastily, laying one light layer of material over the lower half of Clint’s face, unable to look at it anymore. Only then does Tony reach out and touch his friend’s still-cuffed hands.

“I'll—I’ll come back, okay? I'm going to get to a phone, then come right back. I’ll take you to a doctor. Then... _home_. Okay?"

Tony doesn't expect an answer, and he doesn't get one.

 

*******

He's not really surprised that no one is guarding the door, but again is a little insulted.

“Underestimation number _two_ ,” he growls, feeling a lot more like himself now that he’s out of the room. All he needs is a way to summon the Avengers, and the nearest phone is right here in the building, in the pockets of any of their captors. He just has to find one and take it, then hold everyone at bay long enough for the team to arrive.

 _Find a gun_. That's what Natasha and Clint would say. Rhodey, too, probably. Those three dearly love their firearms, and that's what they would choose for themselves. They’d use any manner of attack to take one of the SHIELD agents out and grab the gun.

While a textile factory is not an ideal place to either be held prisoner or escape into—he would have preferred a munitions factory, but beggars really can't be choosers—there's actually quite a lot to work with. He could swing one of the metal chairs around like a club, or get up high and brain someone with one of the sewing machines. He could even tear one of the cords off and use it as a garrote.

But then he finds the main factory floor and knows immediately he won’t do any of those things. It’s a huge open area with tools and hoses and floor to ceiling machines for washing and ironing and pressing, and maybe that wouldn’t be useful for someone like Steve or Bruce or Thor, but it’s an abundance of riches when one is a mechanic.

 

*******

"The nut is connected to this...huge bolt," Tony sings, so rapidly and softly that he's almost just breathing the words. He thinks better when he's doing more than one thing at a time, his brain has always moved too fast and restlessly, and he learned long ago that chattering to JARVIS or singing to himself while he works helps him to focus.

There are footsteps from the floor above, moving back and forth. The open spaces and lack of doors in the factory make sound carry oddly—he can hear muffled voices and a sharp laugh through the ceiling. He also hears Clint’s loud breathing and the wet _thwack_ of the hammer, the crunch of breaking bones and tries to tell himself that those sounds are only in his head, that they aren’t real.

"And the bolt is connected to...this thing." He has no idea what the pieces are called, but he knows machines, knows intuitively how they go together and come apart, how to repurpose them into something greater. His hands move furiously, as if they know instinctively what to construct before even his brain does.

It's probably too much to hope that the water in this place is still connected, but the electricity is on, and Tony figures that if Shaw has been working at setting this all up for a week or two he’d had to go to the bathroom at some point. And sure enough, when he twists the valve the water works, sputtering a little from air in the old pipe, but flowing just fine afterward.

"This hose is connected to the heat pump, oh hear the Word of the Lord!" He hums the rest and tightens the valve. This is going to be beautiful, this is going to be awesome, this is gonna take those assholes completely by surprise and he can only hope that Shaw is there, front and center, when it all goes down.

 _How will you sleep at night, after you've done such a thing?_ It’s not Bruce’s voice this time but Steve’s—Steve worries that way, worries about doing the right thing just as much as the wrong thing, worries about their guilt, the emotional cost when they've made hard, awful choices. _Are you really going to kill people, Tony_?

"You bet your ass I am."

 _It's easier when you don't think about them as people_ , he hears Natasha say again, pushing thoughts of Steve’s disapproval away. He'll deal with the fallout later, when he and Clint are free. For now it’s enough to survive it.

 

*******  
When he’s finished, when he’s ready, all that’s left is to rattle around the room and make enough noise for them to hear and investigate. It’s Sandrine and the four male agents that appear, the police officers that brought he and Clint in long since gone.

"Well, hello there, agents! Glad you could stop by—and all together, too! How convenient!” Shaw isn’t with them, but Tony doesn’t let that bother him, not now.

Two of the men start to move subtly to flank him, all of them waiting, eyes trained warily on the hose in his hands, on the machine that looms hugely behind him. They have guns but Tony’s certain they won't shoot him; he's meant to be toyed with and tortured, not murdered quickly.

"What are you so worried about? This little ol' thing?" Tony taps the machine behind him. "It's an industrial ironer—at least I _think_ it is. I've never seen one before, but let me tell you, I'm in love. I only wish I had a few more minutes to play with it; I’d figure out how to flatten and fold you up, so I could present you to Nick Fury neatly stuffed into legal sized envelope. As it happens, there was a time issue, and I had to go with option B." He holds up the cobbled together weapon in his hand.

"Stark's in the machinery room," one of the men barks into a cellphone—the phone that Tony needs, the one that's going to end this thing. "And he's fucking armed...I don't know with _what_ , just get your ass down here, Dave!"

"You guys know Barton, so you could probably guess that he's a big 'Die Hard' fan," Tony continues, ignoring him easily. "He's forever running around in my air ducts, being obnoxious and channeling Bruce Willis. But me? I'm more of an Indiana Jones kind of guy, and I'm thrilled to have this chance to recreate my favorite scene. You remember what happened to the Nazis when they opened the Ark?"

"Wait!" someone cries, but it's too late for that. Tony grins.

"They got their motherfucking faces melted off."

 

*******

"Oopsie daisies, you impulsive, overly dramatic bastard," Tony chides himself, ruefully picking through wet corpses.

All of them have phones, but they've been ruined by either the pressure or the temperature of the steam and scalding water. He keeps digging through pockets until there's finally a bit of luck—Sandrine has a Starkphone and, naturally, it still works.

"Congratulations on choosing a superior product for all your nefarious doings," he says sincerely to her blistered face, still gaping in a final scream. "Guaranteed to last a lifetime, no matter how long—or short—that may be."

He taps out a volley of well known numbers. "Thank you for contacting Stark Industries. Please select from the following options—"

"JARVIS," he says, and the recording cuts off immediately.

"How may I assist you, sir?"

Tony sags in relief to hear that familiar, velvety voice. "I'm not sure where we are J, so trace this phone. Tell the team there's trouble and to get here fast. Clint is hurt really badly, but I'm alright." He pauses and amends, "So far, at least."

"I am informing them now. May I also contact emergency services, local law enforcement personnel, and SHIELD?"

" _No_ ," Tony says emphatically. "Some of the police are in on it; same with SHIELD. I don't want to risk emergency services until I’m sure they're safe, until we're all there to keep watch. The team, JARVIS. _Only_ the team. And tell them to haul ass."

 

*******

All he has to do now is get back to Clint and wait for the team to get here. It shouldn't take long. But he can't ignore the fact that Shaw wasn't with the others. It’s unlikely that he made it past the main factory floor without Tony seeing him, which means that he's probably still upstairs somewhere.

He doesn't know their names, except Sandrine's, and only knew hers because Barton had known it, had known her. A few of the men’s faces are a little familiar—probably he's seen them in the hallways at SHIELD, or from afar after missions, cleaning up the messes he and the other Avengers had made—but he doesn't know their names. Certainly they’d had lives and hopes and dreams, all of which ended abruptly five minutes before. Maybe they have families that will mourn, people that may come looking for justice someday.

Shaw did all of this because the Avengers, and Tony specifically, hurt his brother.

But for the first time in his life Tony has brothers too, and one them has been hurt.

 

*******

He finds Shaw upstairs in the foreman’s office, cowering in the closet.

"We're both businessmen,” he begs when the door opens, holding out both hands. “Let's make a deal."

"You don’t get to talk your way out of this," Tony tells him. "But you know what? Maybe you can buy your way out.”

“I’ll give you anything you want.”

“All you have to do is take it all back. Don't have the police pick us up. Don't tie me to a fucking table. Don't swing that hammer. Wave a fucking magic wand and make it unhappen. Take it all back, and I'll let you live."

Shaw bursts into loud, terrified sobs and for a moment Tony hesitates, dreading the disappointment he will see in Steve's face, the pity in Bruce’s, the understanding in Natasha’s. But then he thinks of Shaw and the others standing over Clint's bleeding body with their cell phones out, snapping pictures and congratulating one another as if they’d done a righteous thing instead of a cowardly one, as if Clint was just some dying thing for them to laugh at.

“You should be in jail,” Tony tells Shaw, who moans all the louder. “I’d _love_ to see you in jail, suffering every damned day for what you’ve done. But it’s like you said—I’m weak. I’m no hero. I’m just a person, and not a particularly good one.” He steps back from the doorway and picks up the hammer that Shaw had left on the desk, Clint’s blood still gleaming on it. “But then again, this isn't about me. It's all about _you_.”

 

*******

His shirt is covered in Shaw’s blood; there will be no hiding what he has done. Not that he had bothered—he left every body where it fell, even put Sandrine’s phone back in her pocket, and placed the hammer carefully into Shaw’s stiffening hand.

Tony leans against the table leg and waits, staring at the door—because the team will come through that door, and when they do, it’ll all be over. Clint starts moving again and Tony reaches back blindly and rests a feather-light hand on his leg; it doesn’t feel safe to touch him anywhere else.

None of it had gone like it should have.

Barton was supposed to pick those cuffs—no matter that he couldn’t reach them, no matter that they had taken any tools he would have used. He was still supposed to pick them somehow, almost magically, surprising Tony with his adeptness. He was supposed to get the upper hand on Shaw and take out Sandrine and the rest, cool and confident the whole time, performing it all like a dark miracle. Clint was the super spy and _he_ was supposed to take care of it, but instead he had been wholly human and worried for Tony while their captors were prepared and clever and cruel.

They are supposed to still be on the road, Tony driving fast—but not too fast—while Clint props his feet up on the dashboard obnoxiously, the two of them arguing about where to stop for lunch and griping over radio selections. But now instead Clint is broken and Tony is a murderer, and there’s nothing to do but wait for the team to arrive, for it all to be over.

 

********

Usually everything about Thor cracks Tony up—the way he dresses, his food choices, the odd poetry of his speech patterns—but this is one of those rare times where Tony doesn't find anything humorous about the Asgardian. When he remembers that the man is actually a warrior, someone who is revered on his own world, someone that can be just as fucking scary as Natasha Romanov when he feels so inclined. He stands in the doorway to the sewing room with hammer in hand and fills it in a way few others could, like the embodiment of everything terrifying and safe and _real_ all wrapped up together.

"Our friend JARVIS told us that you were in need of assistance,” Thor says. “Although from what I have seen you have done quite well enough on your own." He smiles in obvious approval.

"Where's—" Tony starts to ask, then stops as he hears worried voices and then Steve, Natasha and Bruce are pushing past Thor to tear into the room. Natasha and Steve's faces are carefully schooled, while Bruce is looking a little more tense than Tony cares for at the moment.

"Better pinch that shitfit off, Banner," he snaps. "Clint needs you." He gestures behind himself, where Barton lays too still, unconscious again.

Tony keeps his eyes on the door and his back to everyone else, still unwilling to look at Clint anymore and also not wanting to see the look on their faces when _they_ see him. Natasha's short, involuntary cry of horror is painful enough, and another win for Shaw—to hurt the Black Widow in one of the only ways she _can_ be hurt.

"A hospital or SHIELD?" Bruce asks tightly, his voice an octave lower than normal.

"The local cops were in on part of this, and most of the dead were SHIELD agents. So no matter where he goes, we can’t leave him alone, not even for a second. Not till we’re sure it’s safe.” Tony supposes he sounds paranoid and probably looks half out of his mind, but Natasha, at least, appears to believe him.

"SHIELD," she declares. "I won't let anything happen. _We_ won’t.”

Thor ignores Bruce’s sharp warning and reaches out to take Clint’s hand in his own. The Asgardian isn’t smiling anymore, Tony’s triumph suddenly not so glorious in the face of their teammate’s defeat.

"Who is he?” Thor asks dangerously. “Who is the one that did _this_?”

Tony keeps his eyes on the door. "Just some dead guy.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter 2 is done, just needs to be reread and revised approximately seventy-five times. I had wanted to put them out together, but, alas—‘life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans’, and all that.


	2. Chapter 2

*******

As Tony settles into the chair to debrief Fury’s secretary sweeps in and deposits two sandwiches on the desk before gliding out again.

It’s lunchtime. Fucking _lunchtime_. And somehow that’s the most astounding part of the whole thing—how fast it had all happened. He and Clint had been on another leg of their epic roadtrip around eight that morning, and arrested and tasered and tied up by nine. Somewhere before ten o’clock Clint was a shattered, bleeding mess and by ten thirty Tony had murdered six people. Now they’ve been rescued and Barton is on an operating table while Tony exchanges his bloody clothes for hospital scrubs and has lunch in Nick Fury’s office.

Everyone’s life has gone ass over teakettle and it really seems like it should have taken longer.

Steve handles the aftermath while the others camp out at Medical, takes care of things so that Tony doesn’t have to. He never knows what happens to the police that were involved, how SHIELD deals with the betrayal in its ranks, how the whole incident never makes it to the news. No one says anything about the what Tony did, about the way people died.

“Then I killed your people,” he concludes, taking a dramatic bite of the sandwich he does not want. “And I’m not sorry.”

It’s true. He feels numb and shocky and like his skin is doused with fire and ice and crawling ants all at the same time, but what he _doesn’t_ feel is sorry.

“Of course not.” Fury doesn’t look particularly sorry either. “What else could you do?”

 

*******

He’s lived long and fought hard enough to know that people who make terrible choices have to pay for them later. Sometimes the cost is low—some bad dreams and a few more doubts; eyes darting away from one's reflection in the mirror. Sitting there in Fury’s office, Tony felt numb but still righteous, and suffered through the debrief thinking that it wasn’t so bad, that he could get through this, was somehow going to come out whole on the other side.

But when he finally gets to visit Barton, Tony thinks the price may have been too high after all.

Clint spends the first few days in a world of pain and panic, the entire left side of his face rebuilt and immobilized by screws and pins and titanium plates. Between the drugs and the head injury he can't follow the simplest of conversations, much less their explanation of how he's come to be hurt. Fight or flight response in overdrive, he rips out IVs, tears at stitched skin, tries to pry open his wired jaws.

The medical staff wants to restrain him, but Thor, of all people, refuses to allow it, unable to bear seeing his friend tied down when already so frail. He spends most of those holding Clint carefully while the nurses work around him and doctors hover, while Steve paces, Bruce chews his fingernails, and Natasha sits in grim silence.

Tony doesn’t want to be there; his chest feels tight and his skin crawling as he watches Clint struggle against Thor one minute and cling to him the next, terrified and confused and completely out of his mind. He doesn’t want to look at this writhing thing that doesn’t look or act anything like Clint, who almost doesn’t seem like a real person at all.

 

*******

Clint jerks awake for the hundredth time and claws at his face with his one functional hand before Thor stops him, the other just twitching uselessly against the blanket. Clint makes a choked sobbing noise in the back of his throat and Natasha begins murmuring her way through another pointless repetition of ‘Why You Are in the Hospital’ and its sequel ‘You’re Going to be Okay’. Tears stream steadily down his face and when Thor wipes them away carefully with a corner of the blanket it’s suddenly too much. Too much of everything.

Tony isn’t sure what he intended to say—probably something like “Is he alright?” or “Should I go get the doctor?”—but what comes out instead is “Stop it. Stop fucking _crying_.”

Everyone shoots him surprised looks except for Clint, who’s beyond noticing, and Bruce, who is up and pulling Tony out immediately.

“Wait,” he says frantically, trying halfheartedly to get back into the room. “Wait, I didn’t mean that!”

“I know you didn’t. But neither does he, alright? He can’t help it.” Bruce pushes Tony over to a row of chairs and slumps down beside him, taps on his phone. “I’m going to have Happy come and pick us up. I’ll go home with you. You just need a break is all. You just need a break and then you’ll feel better.”

“He’s supposed to be okay.” Tony knows he sounds angry and offended and he doesn’t mean _that_ , either. “I got us out. It’s supposed to be okay after that. He’s supposed to be grumpy and trying to sneak out of Medical while we roll our eyes and go back to life as usual. That’s what was _supposed_ to happen.”

“Everything’s going to be okay.” But Bruce has been saying that constantly to Clint for two days, and the words just don’t ring true anymore.

 

*******

The Tower is huge, and they’re seldom all in one room, but everything feels too quiet with everyone gone, with only Tony and Pepper rattling around the living spaces. She constantly wants to talk and so he hides in his workshop, which doesn’t feel like the sanctuary it had only a week before, as though what happened in that factory has somehow seeped out to taint and ruin everything he has.

He fiddles with the gauntlet he’d been developing before the incident, but can’t remember now what potential he had previously seen in it. It’s nothing but a bunch of parts that meant nothing until he cobbled them together, at which time they became a thing that could bring pain and death.

 _Most people’s lives mean nothing to you._ Tony rips the covering off the gauntlet and thinks of SHIELD agents with their skin blistering and peeling, their lungs burned when they opened their mouths to scream, then pulls apart the power supply. It’s still a weapon but rendered ineffective, can’t hurt anyone now. He hurls the remains across the room and shatters a computer display, the sound is jarring and destructive and perfect.

 _Are you really going to kill people, Tony?_  he hears, followed by a dispassionate _Don’t think of them as people._ All of his enemies are nameless, faceless until the moment they aren’t, when he’s faced with bodies on the floor or a friend screaming and writhing in a hospital bed.

He’s broken all the glass in the room and shredded Natasha’s upgraded Widow’s Bites before Pepper comes. JARVIS would have usally summoned up Steve or Thor—one of the strong ones—to stop him, but they aren’t here now, everyone camped out at the hospital, wringing their hands uselessly.

Pepper isn’t half as strong as they are, but she has a more effective weapon. “You’re scaring me,” she sobs, and grabs Tony’s hands, holds them up against her tear streaked cheeks. “Tony, stop, you’re scaring me to death.”

“I’m sorry.”

He holds her close and she’s a nice, warm, solid weight against his chest, but all of a sudden her breathing is both too loud and too soft at the same time. He pushes her away suddenly, needing to see that it still looks like her, like Pepper, that there isn’t any blood.

“It’s over,” she insists. “You’re home, and you’re okay, and all of that is over.”

There’s no way to tell Pepper that she’s both right and wrong; that while he and Clint may have survived that day, it certainly isn’t over.

 

*******

They tell him Clint is better.

Steve and Thor go to the hospital and Tony reluctantly joins them, clutching an enormous bouquet of flowers that Clint wouldn’t want under any circumstances, holding it like a shield as he sits on the edge of the hospital chair. He tries not to look directly at Clint, whose face is still unfamiliar, bruised and swollen with shiny metal staples that march down one side to disappear under his chin. He doesn’t acknowledge Tony at all, which is probably alright since he doesn’t pay any attention to Thor or Steve either, just kind of lays there staring listlessly into space while they talk at him.

“Look!” Thor says cheerfully, grabbing the flowers and thrusting them directly into Clint’s face. “A present to make you get well soon.”

“Yeah, do you see who’s come to see you? Do you see who’s sitting over there?” Steve asks, and Tony unclenches his hands from the arms of the chair long enough to throw a half hearted wave. There’s still no response and Steve sighs apologetically. “Between the painkillers and the head injury he’s still pretty out of it. But he’s doing better, huh?”

“Yeah, he looks just great.”

A physical therapist comes an hour later to haul Clint out of bed. Tony stares at the weave on the blanket, the now drooping flowers in a pitcher, the bland wall art—at anything but his friend as he stumbles around the room with Steve on one side and the therapist on the other, each with a hand on the gait belt slung around his waist.

Everyone seems happy and encouraged but all Tony can see are shuffling feet, clumsy hands, eyes dulled with drugs and pain.

  
*******

Pepper finds the meeting, of course she does; Pepper has always been a do-er, a fixer, the solver of all the problems that Tony can’t build his way out of. It’s a support group for victims of violence, and while Tony considers this sort of maudlin self reflection to be his own personal hell, he goes. He goes because of the worry on her face, because of how tired she is when his nightmares keep them both awake, because of how she can’t be happy if he can’t pretend to be, because it doesn’t feel right to make this thing about himself when people are dead and Clint is still in the hospital. 

Most of the people there are women. So many women, of all shapes and sizes and colors, and part of Tony feels like a monster for simply being a man in their presence. He also feels like an imposter—these people probably wouldn’t be so welcoming if they knew what he had done, that he is capable of the same kind of violence that hurt them, that left them broken and seeking comfort. He doesn’t want to be here any more than he wants to be in Clint’s hospital room, but both are his penance—to witness the suffering of those that pay the consequences for the violence of men. Of men like him.

He scrawls ANTHONY on the nametag they give him and keeps his head down and his mouth shut.

He goes on Sundays at first and then tells himself it’s for the lack of anything better to do that he starts going to the Thursday night group also. He sits next to Luis, the only other guy besides Rodney, who always sits stonefaced near the door. Tony doesn’t know if these men are fast food workers or high priced lawyers or any other profession in between, but they all have this one thing in common at least. As little as Tony knows about their lives he does know that Rodney’s wife was attacked and that Luis shot the man who carjacked him, that he has bad dreams and a lingering, visceral anger whenever he speaks about that day.

“Coffee?” Luis asks, holding out a styrofoam cup.

The coffee in this place tastes like absolute crap, but Tony takes it with a mumbled ‘thanks’ because that’s part of it, an unspoken part, the offering and the accepting of _everything_ from their shared experiences to the crummy coffee. He fingers the cup and avoids drinking as Charlotte reads through the usual opening spiel, then steels himself as the narratives begin.

“...Then he took our baby and I just _stood_ there.” The woman speaking is like Tony, with no obvious, outward scars, but her long stare and inflectionless voice reminds him somehow of Natasha. “I was so scared and I knew I should do something, but I just stood there, losing my moments. All the moments I could have done something—called the police, started running after him, screamed for help—all those moments just flew right by me while I stood still.”

She keeps talking but Tony doesn’t hear any of it, remembering staring across the room at Clint’s body, that feeling of suffocation, that incapacitation of whiteout panic. He had pushed through it then because they would have died otherwise, but it’s far too easy imagine himself still there, short circuiting with fear and unable to act, as if he never moved forward at all. The woman’s mouth keeps moving but Tony just listens to the blood rushing into his ears and the echo of a hammer on skin and bone, the sound of Clint’s wet, wheezing breaths from atop a cement floor.

Finally she stops talking and he manages a strangled “Thank you for sharing” along with everyone else.

 

*******

“You know, I made a promise to avoid weapons of mass destruction, so you being in the vicinity is definitely skirting a line and causing me great moral anguish.”

Fury doesn’t respond other than a slightly raised eyebrow, and Tony has to admire his dedication to the maintenance of such impressively impassive facade. The director surveys the destruction in the workshop with a similar lack of reaction.

“Have you been to see Barton? They won’t let _me_ see him.” He’s been home awhile now, but any time Tony wanted to visit he was told it was not a good time—that Clint was sleeping or was having physical therapy or had a headache. After a week of stonewalling he took the hint and stopped asking.

“Yes. He looks like crap.” There’s something refreshing about the director’s bluntness, so like Natasha’s, a direct contrast to the overly careful and diplomatic way that Pepper, Bruce, and Steve deal with everything. “He also fell asleep while I was talking to him, which I’m not completely convinced is related to any current injury.”

Tony laughs and tosses some of the larger pieces of glass into a box for Dum-E to pick up, the bot as likely to dump it back on the floor as it is to take it to the incinerator.

Fury watches him work for awhile, frowning. “Okay, so tell me that you’re seeing someone or that you’re taking some anti-depressants. That you’re doing _something_.”

“Sure. I can tell you that,” Tony says easily, grinning when the director huffs in irritation. “Alright, fine, I _am_ seeing a doctor, the _best_ doctor. His name is...uh...Dr. Glass. George Glass. He’s a shrink over at that new hospital—Our Lady of the Worthless Miracle. The really ironic part is that his therapy involves encouraging me to smoosh all of my personal problems into a tiny little ball of emotion and then shove it way down deep inside.”

“Christ on a cracker,” Fury mutters, throwing up his hands. “You know you’ve got to get your shit together, right? I mean, you have to know you’re benched until then.”

Tony shrugs and kicks the box, sending it sliding over to the wall. It’s not really much of a surprise. “I _am_ working on it,” he says finally. “I don’t know if it’s helping, but I’m trying.”

“Good,” Fury says, looking unhappier than ever. “We’ve been worried.”

 

*******

Now that they’re no longer on full time hospital duty the team starts taking turns hanging out with Tony as well. He knows they’re trying to be supportive but instead it feels like he’s being managed, just another task they’re checking off some list, doing it to give Pepper a break and to make themselves feel better.

Steve is subtle in his Stark wrangling duties—a glance here and there while they sit silently in front of the television, casual questions to gauge whether he’s eating enough. Thor takes the task as seriously as he does everything else, bypassing all delicacy and going for Fury and Romanov levels of straightforwardness, demanding that Tony discuss his feelings and enumerate all the things Thor can do to help.

Bruce is the least obnoxious to be around, since at least they can hang out in the labs together, though neither one actually does anything productive. Tony mostly picks up and sets down tools on the auspices of reorganizing, while Bruce sighs a lot and swings back and forth on a stool, looking generally run down.

“Nobody’s said anything,” Tony blurts out one night, unable to take the silence anymore, companionable or not. “Nobody has said anything about what I did, or the way Shaw died.”

Bruce completes another lazy swing, his foot bumping the table leg, then pushes off with one hand and swings the other direction, bumping it again. “Did you want us to?”

“Not really. I just can’t figure out why you haven’t and I’ve never been a fan of waiting for the shoe to drop. So I’m dropping that motherfucker myself.”

“Maybe because we understand. Maybe because we might have done something similar.” Bruce shrugs. “Who’s to know, really?”

“What has Clint said about it?” They’ve continued to shut Tony out of anything Clint related, and this is what he’s most curious about. Beyond confirming that his friend is recovering he wants to to be able to talk with him about what happened that day.

“Nothing. The last thing he remembers is a meeting that apparently happened two weeks beforehand.”

“Well.” Tony abandons his attempt at organizing to sit down hard on the other stool. “Fuck.”

“Maybe it’s better that he doesn’t remember,” Bruce suggests, then carefully adds, “It sounds like it was a hard thing to live through.”

Tony waves away the idea, still reeling from the realization that Clint isn’t going to be able to answer that question, to tell Tony what he had been trying to say that day—the way out for them that Clint hadn’t been able to take, the way out that Tony hadn’t been able to see. Part of him had sincerely hoped it was the missing piece of the puzzle, the last bit of understanding that would finally allow this thing to be over.

“None of this has gone like it was supposed to,” he says tightly, and Bruce stops swinging and drags his stool over next to Tony’s. “ _None_ of it. He was the trained assassin, the agent of SHIELD. It was supposed to be _him_ that got us out, who did those things. Not me.”

“Maybe,” Bruce concedes gently, “but that’s not what happened. And you need to be able to accept that.”

“Don’t give me that super sensitive head shrinking bullshit. You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“Don’t I? I wasn’t supposed to be a monster. I’m supposed to be married to Betty. I’m supposed to be a father by now—exhausted and happy and sporting twenty extra pounds. The horrible things I see are supposed to be limited to the nightly news. That’s the way it’s _supposed_ to be.“ He sighs. “But that’s not what happened.”

“Clint was supposed to break out of those cuffs, supposed to get us out,” Tony says hollowly. “But he didn’t. He couldn’t.” He takes a deep, ragged breath and Bruce nods. “I killed those SHIELD agents and I should have felt righteous. And I _did_ , but it didn’t last. Clint was supposed to be fine once I got him help, was supposed to go back to being his old self. But he didn’t. When we came home it was supposed to all be over. But it isn’t.”

“That’s not what happened,” Bruce agrees sadly.

 

*******

The next day he decides enough is enough. Bruce and Steve are reluctant but Natasha gives him an appraising look and nods, tells him to come by Clint’s apartment after dinner.

There are signs that people have been camped out here—rumpled blankets and pillows on the couch, takeout containers lined up on counters, Steve’s drawing pencils and Natasha’s hair ties scattered on the coffee table—but everything also seems colorless and muted and eerily still, reminding Tony uncomfortably of deathwatches and beside vigils.

“Steve will be back in less than an hour,” Natasha says. “He just wanted to shower and get some clean clothes while Clint is asleep again. I’m going out but Bruce and Thor are around if you need them.”

“It’ll be fine,” Tony scoffs. “I can handle one sleeping Tweetie Bird.”

“Of course you can. But when he’s awake it’s better if there are two people here. He can be very...“ She gestures vaguely and makes a face. “...exhausting.”

“Yeah, I’m sure a guy that can’t speak and can barely walk a straight line is going to wear me right the fuck out.” Tony rolls his eyes. “Jesus.”

“Sometimes he fixates on a few weird ideas, then gets upset if no one plays into it.” She says it casually, but doesn’t meet his eyes; that behavior obviously bothers her. “So if he wakes up before Steve’s back you _will_ call Bruce or Thor.” Natasha glares until he nods in agreement, then sighs and pats her pockets absently, searching for car keys, finally snagging them off the coffee table. “Okay, do you know the sign language alphabet?”

“As long as he doesn’t use ‘x’ ‘r’ or ‘k’ I think I’m good with the rest.”

Natasha flips through those letters and ends with a popped up middle finger directly in front of Tony’s nose. “It’s nice to have you back.”

 

*******

He’s been in Clint’s apartment many, many times but never his bedroom—even for an unrepentant boundary crosser such as himself some spaces are still sacrosanct. He pauses in the doorway, half hoping Clint will sit up suddenly in the dim room and demand he get the hell out, but of course he doesn’t. He makes his way over carefully to sit on the edge of the bed, determined to get a good look at his friend while no one else is there to frown disapprovingly, while Clint can’t feel self conscious.

He’s curled up on his side with both the pillows and the blankets pushed far away from his body, his shoulders pulled in, his hands tucked protectively into the space between his abdomen and his drawn up knees. His face is no longer so swollen and misshapen, even the worst of the bruising is almost gone. There are long red lines of new scar tissue up the side of his face—wide and ragged where the skin had torn, neat and straight where the surgeons worked to reattach his jaw. His hair is still far too short and looks as if it’s somehow growing in a shade darker than it had been before.

But despite all these things he looks like _Clint_ again. A version that has been sent through the wringer and come out worse for wear, but still Clint Barton nonetheless.

“Hey,” Tony says quietly. “Wake up.” Then, a little louder, “ _Hey_. Wake up.”

He doesn’t.

Tony rests his hand carefully on Clint’s leg, just like he did that day, feels his heart rate start to pick up uncomfortably. Remembers the paralyzing fear of _he’s dead he’s dead_ and listens for Clint’s steady breathing to bring back the dissenting _he’s_ _alive_. Clint is breathing and that means he’s alive, and he’s laying on pale blue sheets now instead of in a red pool of his own blood and teeth. He doesn’t wake up now only because he’s exhausted and drugged and still healing, not because he can’t.

Tony closes his eyes and lets his heart pound, lets the ragged breathing come out loud and unchecked, not trying to conceal it now since he’s sure Clint’s unlikely to be bothered. Tony lets the panic settle in and sit for awhile, the way it couldn’t then, when he’d needed to get them out. It doesn’t matter how long it goes on this time—he just waits for it to pass, because they’re out, they’re home, they’re together and alive and these moments are safe enough to lose.

 

*******

Steve bursts into the apartment just as Tony’s fastening the toaster back together. His hair is still damp and his face is flushed, as if he came on the run, fully expecting to find an apocalyptic scenario when he opened the door.

“Is everything okay?” he demands, then notices the toaster and exchanges the concerned look for a guilty one. “Oh. Thor broke that.”

“I figured as much. Not that Barton’s flea market find is worth salvaging, but fixing it made me feel all useful and shit.” Tony tosses the screwdriver back into a junk drawer—an assortment of paper clips and batteries and tightly packed plastic grocery sacks—and presents the appliance with a flourish. “Anyway, I needed some busywork to cool me down after reading all your naughty words.” He waggles his eyebrows and fans himself a little before nodding at the neat stack of white notecards on the kitchen table.

“Yeah, Natasha wrote those,” Steve says quickly.

“Always tossing the blame on someone else, eh, Rogers? Be a man and own your pornographic flashcards!”

“They’re for Clint,” Steve insists, blushing. “You know, to practice his finger spelling—an occupational therapy thing for his right hand. Natasha said we needed to use words that are motivating, but I think everyone just likes to force me read them out loud.”

“And rightfully so—that’s fucking _hilarious_.” Tony pulls the top card off the stack and slowly spells out FELLATIO. “How did I do?” he asks, widening his eyes innocently.

“Just great,” Steve grumbles, but with the first genuine smile Tony’s seen from him in ages. He snatches the next card—BASTARD, written in large, neat capital letters—and flicks it toward Tony, hitting him in the chest. “You and Natasha can both just—“ he stops short and smiles. “Oh, good, you’re up.”

And there’s Clint, wavering unsteadily in the doorway, bleary eyed but awake. He sees Tony and his face twists into the lopsided thing that is his current smile.

Tony throws on a wide grin of his own, hopefully more convincing than it feels, and announces too heartily, “They finally let me see you, Mushmouth!”

Steve gasps but Clint makes a sound that might be a laugh and gives him a thumbs up. He starts to stumble toward them but Steve intercepts him quickly and steers him over to the couch by the elbow instead. They both look expectantly at Tony until he joins them.

“You...’kay?” Clint grits out between his wired teeth, grimacing. He’s hard to understand but it’s great to hear his voice again after so long, no matter how it sounds.

“Yeah, I’m okay. You’re looking good.” When the archer raises a skeptical eyebrow Tony laughs and amends, “Well, all things considered.”

Clint starts to say something else, but Steve clears his throat in pointed warning, then tells Tony, “He’s not supposed to talk at all until the wires come out. When he cheats and does anyway the headaches are worse.”

Clint scoffs and they fall into a silence that Tony feels compelled to fill, talking at exhausting length about a project that doesn’t really exist—he hasn’t built anything since the incident, but they don’t know that. Steve nods and _hmm_ s politely while Clint only half listens with an expression that rapidly glazes over. Even so, Tony recognizes the jut of his chin, the set in his eyes—it’s the classic ‘determined Barton’ face, and it’s a damned beautiful sight.

“Bruce always says I put too many eggs in the ‘inert elements’ basket, but I maintain that basket contains the _perfect_ amount of eggs,” Tony concludes, barely even listening to himself at this point. Clint blinks in surprise when the story ends, then waves to get Steve’s attention, flips through letter signs faster than Tony can track.

“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea,” Steve says, “but you have to drink a protein shake first.” Clint rolls his eyes unhappily and Steve shrugs. “You _have_ to. I’ll make it; you can stay right here and keep visiting.”

Clint sighs dramatically and makes a _go ahead_ gesture with the air of someone conferring a great favor, but the instant Steve leaves the room Clint’s good hand darts out to grab Tony’s wrist far too tightly, his expression going from irritated to wide eyed and urgent.

“Whoa, hey, what’s wrong?”

Attempting to keep his volume low and avoid supersoldier hearing, Clint struggles out “Mmmm spposed g-g-g-“ and gets caught in a stutter that looks as painful as it sounds.

“Hey, stop talking; you’re gonna send me back to the bad boy book just when I’m finally making inroads.” Tony pries Clint’s fingers carefully from his arm. “Are you okay? Should I call Steve back in?”

Clint shakes his head frantically and gropes blindly for the tablet on the coffee table as he glances back toward the kitchen, where a blender starts whirring obnoxiously. Tony hands it over and Clint tries to type, giving up in frustration when his shaking fingers just produce about twenty “H”s in a row.

“What’s going on?” Tony sets the computer aside with a sinking feeling. “Are you in pain or something?”

Clint makes an indecipherable noise and taps his wrist, where a watch would be if he wore one, points to himself and Tony, to his injured face, back to his wrist, then sketches a huge question mark into the air.

Tony’s never been great at charades but Clint is pretty skillful, and something about the desperation in the gestures makes understanding easier still. “When?” Tony guesses. “How long...you and me... How long since this all happened?”

Clint nods in eager relief and casts a furtive look toward the kitchen. There’s the sound of Steve humming, and a spoon clinking loudly against the sides of a glass.

“You’ve been home about three weeks,” Tony says slowly. “Didn’t they—?”

But Clint waves the question away hastily, eager to get in another of his own before Steve returns. He points to his face again then extends his thumb and pointer finger into a gun shape and mimes out knocking himself in the head with it. Traces out another question mark into the air. _Was I hit with a gun?_

“It was a hammer,” Tony answers, feeling sick not only with the memory of it, but also that no one has told Clint that when he’s obviously been wondering. That he’s had to wait this long for Tony to finally show up and answer that question. “It was in an old factory and—“

“Maybe this isn’t a good thing to talk about just now,” Steve says mildly, appearing from nowhere and sitting down too closely beside Clint, who slumps back into the couch cushions with a frustrated moan.

“Why not?” Tony challenges, still with that crawling, uneasy feeling. “I guess we don’t need your permission to talk about whatever the hell we want!”

Steve sets the protein shake, a syringe, and several prescription bottles onto the overloaded coffee table. “Come on, we’ve been over and over this,” he says to Clint. “It’s not good for either one of you.” Clint makes a defeated sound, struggling to say something, and Steve grabs both of his shoulders gently. “Just stop. _Stop_.”

“He wants to know about that day. Why wouldn’t you tell him about it?”

“I have,” Steve says, not looking away from Clint, who’s breathing too fast. “ _We_ have, so many times. Every time he asks, over and over again. It’s just that it’s near the end of the day now, and he always gets more confused when he’s tired.”

Clint shakes his head emphatically at Tony, grimacing at the motion, points at Steve, mimes a talking mouth with his fingers, shakes his head again. _He’s lying._

“What the fuck is going on??” Tony looks from the archer’s wild eyed, pale face to the captain’s tired one. “He _just_ woke up from a nap. He isn’t tired.”

“JARVIS can you call Bruce here? He can explain it all better than I can.” Steve runs his hands up and down Clint’s arms “Shh, calm down, it’s okay.”

Clint mumbles something unhappily and falls forward, pressing his forehead into Steve’s shoulder. He points in Tony’s direction, says something again, loud and desperate, something that Tony can’t understand at all but still sounds vaguely familiar, Steve shushing him all the while.

“What’s he saying?”

“It doesn’t matter; it doesn’t mean anything.” Steve has his arms around Clint, who wraps one of his own arms around his head, his other hand fisted into the clean shirt Steve had wanted so badly. “ _Stop_ ,” Steve says quietly into the side of Clint’s head. “Let it go, come on, you’re scaring Tony.”  
  
“I’m not scared,” he says automatically, “but maybe I should—“ _leave, escape, run like hell_ , he wants to say, up and edging toward the front door “—go get Bruce for you?”

Unfortunately for him, Bruce comes in just then, pushing past Tony with a quick, concerned look.

“More of the same,” Steve says, and that must mean something to Bruce, who nods and pulls Clint away to check him over.

Tony stands pressed against the wall, as far as he can get from the situation without leaving, and watches as Steve wraps his arms around Clint while Bruce draws up a huge needle-less syringe full of liquid medication and works it into the gap at the back of his wired jaws. Bruce murmurs something that’s probably meant to be reassuring, thumbs at the tears leaking from Clint’s eyes.

“Okay, fuck this. I’m out,” Tony announces, because while watching two teammates force a tranquilizer on a third is bad enough, what this situation certainly does _not_ need is his own imminent panic attack thrown on top of it.

“Wait!” Bruce calls, and jumps up to stop Tony in the doorway. “Don’t leave. Just wait—stay a bit longer, and you’ll see that everything’s okay.”

“Are you fucking _kidding_ me??” Tony looks back into the living room, where Clint is slumped against the arm of the couch while Steve rubs his back and watches the others with open worry. “Is he brain damaged?” he asks finally. “Is that what this is?”

“He’s still recovering,” Bruce insists, but all Tony hears is the non-answer in those words. “It’s so many things—the pain and the medicine and the concussion and a lot of frustration, all mixed up together. The balance issues and the gaps in his memory scare him. It’s all making him get a little—“ Bruce shrugs helplessly “— _stuck_ on a few ideas.”

Tony might have a bit of an idea of what that’s like.

“Look, see? He’s calmer already,” Bruce insists. “Will please you come back in?”

“Maybe another time,” Tony says.

But the days pass and he doesn’t go back.

 

*******

So it’s a surprise, but probably shouldn’t be, when Clint lurches into the workshop in the middle of the night three days later. He’s definitely not supposed to be venturing out this far, especially on his own, and Tony can’t imagine how he even made it here, imbalanced and still weak.

“What the _hell_?” he snaps incredulously, tools clattering to the table and hurrying over before the archer can up the drama quotient even further by passing out completely. Tony snakes an arm around Clint’s waist, intending to pull him over to one of the few stationary chairs, then supposes they might not make it and eases him down to sit against the wall, instead.

“JARVIS, tell anyone that might be looking for a missing Avenger that he’s here and nothing is my fault. Jesus Christ, Barton, how did you ever make it up seven floors?”

Clint doesn’t answer, pale and sweating and trying to gasp, but unable since he can’t open his mouth. His arms are wrapped around his chest, the computer tablet pinned there in a deathgrip as he leans back into the wall.

“I guess you still wanted to talk.” Tony sighs and plucks at Clint’s sweat soaked shirt, pulling it away from his skin. “I meant to come back, but I...got kind of distracted.” He sits down cross legged in front of Clint, waiting for him to settle down, and screws his palms into his eyes, but it’s too familiar, suddenly—that ragged sound of breathing, Clint’s and his own. Tony’s hands spring immediately away from his eyes, needing to see that Clint’s still okay, needing to see his face.

There’s no blood. Clint’s eyes are hazy and pained, but they’re open and full of concern. He attempts to pass the tablet to Tony but his hands are so shaky that he loses his grip. It falls to the floor with a smack, landing face up, and Tony glances down to see what is typed there, what Clint had dragged himself through the Tower to say.

EVERYONE GOES FIVE OVER

“What the fuck,” Tony whispers, looking up to meet Clint’s wide eyes. “What the _fuck_!” he says again, louder. “Bruce said you didn’t remember any of it.”

Clint points to the words, then twists both hands into some sort of clumsy gesture, and Tony has no idea what any of it means.

“You _remember_.” He reaches out and grabs the front of Clint’s t-shirt, pulling him forward a little, paying no attention when the archer weakly tries to push his hand away. “You _do_ , don’t you? You remember what happened.” It doesn’t make any sense for Clint to lie about that, there’s absolutely nothing to be gained from doing so, but the words are right there.

Clint shakes his head again, points to the tablet and then to his forehead, raises his index finger and sketches a question mark into the air. Points to his forehead again. Makes a confused face, points back to the words. Tony thinks for a minute, trying to puzzle it out, letting Clint catch his breath yet again, letting his own heart resume a more normal rhythm.

“So...you don’t remember getting kidnapped,” Tony says finally, letting go of Clint’s shirt, simultaneously disappointed and relieved. “But you _do_ remember hearing this, and you don’t know why.” Clint nods frantically and Tony sighs, sitting back onto his heels. “It was—it was just something I said when the cops pulled us over. You accused me of speeding and I said that _everyone_ goes five miles over the speed limit. It was just a joke about how everyone...you know... _cheats_ a little.” He smiles as he says it, but the words don’t sound very funny as they leave his mouth. “It didn’t mean anything.”

Clint exhales loudly and sags back against the wall in defeat, making no acknowledgement when Tony sighs and moves to sit against the wall beside him.

“They didn’t know. You kept asking about it, and Steve and Bruce and Natasha thought it was just another case of you being out of it, talking crazy, but the joke’s on them, huh? Because ‘everyone goes five over’ was a real thing.” Tony laughs again, the sound getting caught in his throat. “You know, you tried to tell me something. That day. You couldn’t say it in front of Shaw, but you were looking at me so... _intently_. I knew I was supposed to see something in it. The way out for us, maybe. But I didn’t understand. And afterwards I felt like...like if I could figure it out, figure out what I was missing, I’d be able to move forward.” He sighs. “I guess I wasn’t the only one that hoped that.”

Clint shrugs helplessly, spreads his hands. “Mmm sorry I d-d-d-,” he grits out painfully, almost doubled over with the effort, and Tony grabs his wrist quickly, turns to face him.

“Don’t, shhh. It’s okay. I know you don’t remember, and there’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s okay.” Tony brushes his fingers across Clint’s forehead, not sure if he’s trying to wipe away sweat or pain or bad memories. “Come on, let’s get you back to your bed. Natasha is going to go on a kill crazy rampage if she wakes up and sees you looking like this.”

But Clint shakes his head and motions to the tablet until Tony reluctantly hands it over. He types with agonizing slowness, his fingers shaking badly, not bothering to correct any words, because they’ll be just as bad, or worse, when he tries again.

IIIIM SIORRY I DIDNT S AVE. US

And _that_ hurts, maybe more than any of the rest of it.

Tony closes his eyes but he can still see it—a bare foot propped up on a metal folding chair, Clint laying too still. His own ziptied hands, bound and useless, unable to stop anything. He opens his eyes and looks at the screen, a needless apology still burning there.

“It’s not your fault. You wanted to,” Tony manages finally. “I’m sure of that. And you would have, if you’d had the chance. But...that’s not what happened.”

  
*******

** EPILOGUE **

He can’t tell the whole thing, can’t tell it exactly the right way, not without giving out a lot of personal and even classified information. But Tony shares their story anyway, as well as he can.

He had worried Clint would sit there as awkwardly as he himself had done for ages, but Barton’s a lifelong attendee of Al-Anon meetings and settles in immediately, using his real name and sprawling out as comfortably as anyone can in a hard plastic chair. Clint helps Tony tell it, because it’s his story, too, even if most of it he only knows because of what others have told him. It’s enough that he remembers the most important part—how it ends, with them together and strong on this day, instead of frightened and bleeding on a different one.

It’s a novelty for the group to hear a shared story from two voices, to meet Clint and to have Tony actually participate for the first time in six months. Everyone is curious but gracious as ever; some listen with their eyes closed, hearing their own pain in the words. Tony understands that now, and hopes that sharing their experience will help someone the way others’ have helped him.

“I didn’t really know her,” Clint says, fingering the styrofoam cup, the coffee long gone, now just busily worrying crescent shaped designs into the rim with his fingernails. “Just from work—you know, just well enough to nod at in the cafeteria, or say hello to in the hallways sometimes. I don’t think she even disliked me, so I’m not sure why she was there. Maybe it didn’t even have anything to do with me, and everything to do with her. I suppose it doesn’t even really matter _why_.” He makes an attempt at his most winning smile, but it’s a little too sad around the edges to fool anyone, even a bunch of strangers. “But I wonder about it, sometimes.”

Tony closes his eyes briefly in acknowledgement, opens them.

“The part that stays with me the most is that at first I was fine with the idea of violence, because I thought it was going to be Clint that got us out.” Tony wants to stare at the floor, but looks up instead to meet the eyes of other survivors, and finds no judgement there. “It killed me to see him that way. Hurt. But I had no problem when I thought the only hit he was gonna take would be to his conscience. I was _fine_ with that. Fine with whatever it would take to get us out, with the violence of it, when it was supposed to be on him. When _he_ would beat them senseless, when _he_ would kill them if necessary. I could live with that, but it all suddenly felt different when it had to be _me_. I worry that it all makes me no better than the people that hurt us. That’s what _I_ think about, still, and what I’m most sorry for.”

He turns to face Clint, who looks back at him with narrowed, wary eyes—he hadn’t expected anything like this, and Tony knows it really wasn’t a fair thing to do, but there’s really no other scenario where Clint would let this be said without endless protests and interruptions. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Clint says firmly, patting his arm in a quick dismissive gesture. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”

Tony holds out his hand, and Clint stares at it for a long moment before making a soft, unhappy sound and gripping it with his own. “I’m _sorry_ , Clint,” Tony says again. And waits. Everyone’s eyes are on them, so Clint closes his, all of his good natured ease suddenly gone.

And he struggles to speak, struggles in a way he hasn’t in a long while now, in a way that has nothing to do with injuries and everything to do with what happened that day, even if he can’t remember it, even if neither of them can make sense of any of it. He struggles but he makes himself say it, every wrung out word as painful for him to say as they are necessary for Tony to hear.  
  
“I forgive you.”

It’s quiet for a long time before someone offers the first “Thank you for sharing.”

Tony takes what feels like the first real breath he’s had in ages and Clint ducks his head, smiling awkwardly into his beleaguered coffee cup as the sentiment is echoed in many voices, both masculine and feminine, old pain and new, smiling and crying, all wrapped up together.

“Don’t _ever_ do that again,” Clint warns quietly as voices continue to murmur around them, everyone gathering their coats, preparing to go home. “No more of that, okay?”

“No more,” Tony promises. “It’s over now.”

*******

 

 


End file.
